Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of the Anime Community Wiki
Introduction History of the Knowledge Community For centuries people have gathered together as communities to interact with each other. With the rise of the text, whether it be script, or electronic, communities began to divide creating groups among groups allowing people to connect through a common interest. In today’s world, there are an infinite number of different groups or collectives which can be considered communities branching out touching every subject that inspires discussion or opinions. One of the more popular ways to interact as a community is with the internet. This allows people to connect from anywhere in the world to talk about a common interest. As a community such as this forms, it not only discusses the common topic but attempts to gain more and more knowledge about this topic. This “topic” can be anything from a piece of writing to a television series or person. As these communities evolved, they became what Henry Jenkins called a “knowledge community.” Jenkins defines a knowledge community as a group of individuals whose purpose is to continuously acquire information about a topic which, in Jenkins text, was to spoil the television show SurvivorJenkins, Henry. "Spoiling Survivor: The Anatomy of a Knowledge Community." Course Readings, ENGL295. These communities can often become a very large, complex array of interactions between many different types of people. Jenkins introduces the idea of gated communities as well as the expert paradigm. As in a personal community (one that is not online but is created via real personal interactions) there are groups of people who may stick together and separate themselves from the rest. This is the idea behind the gated communities through the electronic world; groups who are in a community yet keep all information to themselves. Also, in the offline personal communities, there are experts or people who have degrees or actual credentials in a particular area of study contributing to the overall wellbeing of the community. This outlines Jenkins idea of the expert paradigm, and area of the knowledge community involving experts or people who have an advanced level of knowledge in this area contributing to the communities’ goal of gathering information. Rise of the Knowledge Community The idea of electronic online communities brings up a whole new array of questions concerning the definition of these knowledge communities; what constitutes as an online knowledge community? How did they arise? Must they be in pursuit of certain knowledge? Let’s start with the beginning. An online community in general requires one major component; the internet. In order for these people to even interact via electronic means, there has to be appropriate technology facilitating these interactions. One of the main technologies which allow these communities to be created was what is known as Web 2.0. This is a technology which goes beyond the static page of a traditional website. Users interact with web 2.0 type sites in a completely dynamic way http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0. A prime example of this type of dynamic website manipulation is a Wiki page. As we learned how to make, alter, and design a wiki page in class, we discovered the many ways people can contribute to an overall work by adding whatever information they may have as an individual. This eliminates the traditional sense of an author and creates what we called “Datwikism.” We determined that with the idea of multiple authors comes an evolution of the text. As people continuously revise the page, made possible by these new web 2.0 technologies, it is refined to the point of excellence or pure vandalistic madness. Another interesting aspect of these knowledge communities is the idea of hypermediacy and immediacy described by Jay David Bolter and Richard GrusinBolter, Jay; Grunsin, Richard. "Immediacy, Hypermediacy, and Remediation." Course Readings, ENGL295 in their work ''Remediation: Understanding New Media. ''Within their writings, they describe immediacy as a texts attempt to eliminate the medium it uses to make the reader/user feel as if it is real, and hypermediacy as the opposite, a work making the medium which it uses apparent. Within these communities, there is a sense of both. The feeling of being a part of a real community eliminates the feel of being engaged on the computer as a medium creating a sense of immediacy where the active interaction with the website such as a wiki page is exemplifying the computer and internet as a medium giving a sense of hypermediacy. Dragon Ball Z as a Community Dragon Ball Z is an extremely popular animated series arising from Japan. The series began with a pre-series, Dragon Ball and progressed into a sequel type animated series or anime. The premise started with the search for the dragon balls because of the legend behind them saying they may grant a wish to whoever collects all seven. Scattered across the world, the main character and his friends must fend off villains looking to use the dragon balls for evil. In the sequel series, Dragon Ball Z, it became less about the dragon balls and more about defending the earth against multiple alien threats and unimaginably strong villains. Being one of the biggest and oldest anime series of all time, there is a huge fan base to go along with it. Among this fan base are multiple knowledge communities picking apart every aspect of the show form animation and characters to story plots and backgrounds. Three of the biggest aspects of the Dragon Ball Z fan community is the knowledge community behind it, the refashionings these communities have created, and the countless interpretative disputes which take place under the Dragon Ball Z community. Using Wikis, video uploading sites, and forums arguing about aspects of the show, the community shows a diverse use of many types of dynamic sites risen from the start of Web 2.0. I have found that although the series is no longer running, the fan communities are and there are a large array of creative communities and groups continuing the fan base and even still growing the knowledge communities. Dragon Ball Z Community Analysis Is Dragon Ball Z Really a Knowledge Community? As stated above by Jenkins, a knowledge community is a group of individuals continuously seeking knowledge on one topic. This topic can be virtually anything. There are no rules or regulations – at first – and it simply forms with people who have a common interest. Due to the immense fan based surrounding Dragon Ball Z, there are multiple knowledge communities each studying or interested in differenct aspects of the show. I guess the primary knowledge community would be one which has or searches for information on the series as a whole. These communities can be found through the multiple wiki pages created for Dragon Ball Z. Sites include; dragonball.wikia.com/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Z‎, dragonball.wikia.com/‎, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball‎, and n.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dragon_Ball_Z_episodes just to name a few. Some of the wikis are related to episode listing, villain characteristics and other analyses of different aspects of the show. Fans can have many different reasons for putting this large amount of effort into finding out as much as they can about their particular topic. For example, Jenkins text used the knowledge community surrounding survivor and their purpose to spoil each episode before it aired. With a knowledge community such as the one around Dragon Ball Z, the majority of the people do this simply because they love the show or feel they have insight onto some aspects of it. I’m sure there are some communities which have a more direct purpose as to why they do what they do. One example is the group which wanted the creators to bring the show back by any means necessary. When they could not, they took it upon themselves to create their own new fan fiction series using their pooled kowledge (and artistic skills) to accomplish their goal themselveshttp://dbzepisode.org/watch/dragonball-af/. As for the types of people in the community, everyone seems to be equal and there are no real gated communities. I think this is because there is not a real “goal” so everyone who contributes is viewed equal. There can’t be any new facts to add to any encyclopedic sites since the show is no longer active and has been picked apart over the years. This causes inserting more of opinions than facts by fans. Experts in this field are not really existent because an opinion cannot be true or false and there is no new information to be discovered. The only real expert in these knowledge communities would be the web sites hosted by the creators or sponsors of the show. If there is any new information about any continuation of the show, movies made related to the show, or other types of inside information, these are the people who would know making them the experts. This could also create a gated knowledge community. For example, there is a new movie based on Dragon Ball Z to be released and the creators are only giving teaser trailers to the rest of the community. They are keeping their inside knowledge away from the rest of the people rather than add it to contribute to the community. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hK0OuAohf8I Arguements or Just Interpretive Disputes? When it comes to the Dragon Ball Z community, the down and dirty action is in the forums. Like I said, all the information is basically known about the series due to the fact that it has been cancelled and has been out for so long. This means that the only thing left to do is argue. Argue as in debating not fighting or yelling and screaming. Every forum about Dragon Ball Z has some sort of hot debate over different interpretations of the show. There is a huge range of debates and interpretations: battle power logic, top fights, dumbest moments, the creators way of drawing, power levels of characters, questions on why things happened, “How fast are DBZ characters:” just to name a fewhttp://dbzf.co.uk/forum/898/2/. A knowledge community such as this may not be thought of as a typical knowledge community, and that may be correct. But there are plenty of other types of knowledge communities. Take The Rocky Horror Picture Show for example. It has one of, if not the largest knowledge community of them all and it revolves around a four hour performance. Only four hours yet there is this uncanny amount of people and knowledge revolving around something so short. Most would think that they would run out of things to look into. This is the same issue with the Dragon Ball Z community. However, The Rocky Horror Picture Show took a different approach. Rather than debate and dispute all aspects of the show, they took the most insignificant of details and transformed them into jokeshttp://www.rockyhorror.com/. This just shows the diversity of these groups and how they can strive on a very limited amount of information (information being the entirety of their topic). The real information with Dragon Ball Z, the facts and figures, come into play during these debates. The people will use facts and episodes as sources to back any claims they may have. The debating and arguing may bleed into the “Haters” category but this is the key difference. A Hater will not have the resources because they do not support the show and will not bother looking up the facts. Forum debates among fans can get very in depth and surprisingly thought out. Another interesting point to make is that when there is a one on one debate, because the forums are public, anyone agreeing or who has some information not yet addressed to one of the sides may jump in and aid the debater. This can create a large group of people all backing each other’s claims while arguing against an equally large group. Knowledge communities similar to that of Dragon Ball Z or The Rocky Horror Picture Show have the problem of limited resources which communities like Jenkins’s spoiling survivor do not. These are the fan based knowledge communities that are the best. Due to the lack of consistent information, they have to get creative. Creativity and adaptation is what causes for evolution and creates the diverse communities which are infinite in number. Refashionings Are the Best Part Refashionings are the building blocks to new media and technology. Taking an idea and manipulating or changing it into your own is the premise behind almost everything new. Kirby Ferguson mentioned this in his talk “Everything is a Remix.”citation. The music we listen to, all arises from two basic genres. It began with R&B and country western. Country western began to tell stories and merge with technology to become folk while R&B merged with country western to become Rock ‘n’ Roll. From these genres came pop, hip hop, disco, metal, and all the genres of music we listen to today. New genres are simply fusions or refashionings of older ones with a slight change. The same is true for all media and art. The Dragon Ball Z community falls perfectly under this category. There are two main refashionings that I want to mention. Both are very different takes on the show but both are completely fan based and created with no influence form the original creators of the show. The first I would like to mention is a series called, Dragon Ball Z Abridged. This is a refashioning in which a group of fans came together, created an actual cast to match the characters voices, and edited actual film clips to create a flawless parody of the original show. Refashionings can do two things, they can attempt to match the original or break from it and only use the premise. Dragon Ball Z Abridged does both. By using actual film clips and matching the voices, they are attempting to recreate the series exactly the way it was aired. Even the plot is in order and strikingly accurate. The difference is the dialogue and actions. Although the characters follow the same storyline, this group of fans (called Team Four Star) alter their actions to have them say things we as fans wish they would. They have also used their series to remake the characters personalities and emphasize their flaws while combining inside jokes to create a hilarious remake. The best part of this approach is that this new series is more amusing to the actual fans because of all the reference to the actual story linehttp://teamfourstar.com/dbza-episodes/. The other refashioning takes a different approach. Instead of remaking the show, the fans made a continuation onto the ending. Adding onto the series eliminated the possibility of using old film clips so this method required actual fan art to create a complete fan fiction series. In order to do this, the knowledge community has to come together to agree upon what should happen in the storyline and what it should look like. This requires a tremendous amount of coordination in order to make it look as close to the series as possible. Fan fiction relies on complete accuracy in order to create a sequel that is believable and can follow up the original series perfectly. Both means of refashioning require a lot of talent and creativity. Refashionings not only bring about new ideas but explore the possibilities and questions people have about the original. The Dragon Ball Z fan art allows the fans to experience what it would be like under any circumstances in the show. Dragon Ball Z abridged answers questions using humor which were left blank or vague in the actual series. These types of refashionings gives the fans and original content a further reach then it previously had. Further Sources Official DBZ Forum Watch Every Episode of DBZ! The Creators of DBZ Abridged Dragon Ball Z news Reference Category:Browse